It was his turn to laugh. “You think I asked you to dance out of . . . pity?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged.
“I asked you to dance because you had the same reaction to Liv’s mother that I did when she almost fell out of her chair.”
Her lips quirked finally with a smile.
Thank God. He took advantage of her stillness to creep closer, lowering his voice as he approached. “And then I kept asking you to dance and pretty much never left your side after that because you might be the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
Her cheeks flushed, and he had the most delicious flashback to that very color on her face when she arched her back and shuddered his name.
But that wasn’t the look she was giving him now. She shook her head and pressed her warm hand to the center of his chest, right above the spot where his heart was gearing up for a game of brink of death. “You don’t have to do that.”
He quickly covered her hand with his. “Do what?”
“Soothe my ego. I’m a big girl. I know what last night was.”
“You mean incredible and the start of something that could be amazing? I agree.”
Her blush deepened. “Look, I had fun too. But this would never work between us.”
“It worked pretty well last night.”
She started rapidly backing away from him. “But now it’s today. And you’re you and I’m me, and—”
“And we could be a pretty damn good we.”
She smiled softly. “That sounds like one of your songs.”
“Gretchen.” He held out his hand. She stared at it with unmistakable longing.
But then she snapped out of it and walked to the door. “Thank you,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “For everything.”
Colton crossed his arms. “You can say anything you want except that. Just don’t thank me.”
She paused once again before turning the handle. “Can I count on you to keep this between us?”
“Trust me, my lips are sealed.”
Then, without a single backward glance, she walked out the door.
For the first time in his life, Colton Wheeler was someone’s dirty little secret.
CHAPTER ONE
One year later
Colton Wheeler lived by very few hard and fast rules, but one of them was when someone asked you to keep a secret, you took it to your grave. So it was with no small gut punch of betrayal that he realized that these guys, of all people, would go back on their word to him. They were supposed to be his best friends.
Colton adjusted the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder with an annoyed jerk. “You swore you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Come on, man,” said Gavin Scott, a yoga mat tucked under his arm. He wore a sleeveless training shirt that showed off the line across his bicep that separated pasty-white shoulder from perpetual farmer’s tan. “It’s not like we told total strangers.”
“It doesn’t matter who they are. I promised her I would keep this quiet.”
“We didn’t mean to put you in a bad position,” said Del Hicks, jumping in. “Honestly.”
“And we didn’t even think you’d be here anyway,” Gavin added, officially pouting.
“Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“Because of the meeting. Isn’t that today?”
Ah, yes. The Meeting. It had taken on such infamous significance that it was now preceded only by the followed by a capital M. The Meeting in which he would find out if he still had a career left. But his friends didn’t know that. They only knew he was meeting with the music label to discuss his next album after a two-year recording hiatus.
And now he was the one who felt guilty, an emotion he’d become all too familiar with in the past year. How could he expect these guys to live up to some standard of friendship when he was betraying them every single day with the things he’d been keeping from them?
For a global music star, true friendships were hard to come by. The more famous he got over the years, the lonelier life became. It was hard to trust who really wanted to be in his life and who just wanted the bragging rights of being associated with a superstar.
But these guys, they were the real deal. The best friends he’d ever had. And they’d met in the unlikeliest of ways—through romance novels. They called themselves the Bromance Book Club, a group of men who read romance novels to learn how to see the world through a less toxic lens than the ones that all cisgender heterosexual men are taught to look through. Braden Mack was the one who had started it all and pulled Colton into it. He’d been skeptical, as most of the guys were when they first joined the book club. But Colton quickly learned it was about a lot more than books. It was about camaraderie and brotherhood. The lessons of romance novels had taught them all how to be better men, better partners, and better friends to one another.
“It’s okay,” Colton finally sighed. “I’ll talk to—”
“Mr. Wheeler, what is the meaning of this?”
—her.
Shit. Colton steeled himself as he turned around and looked straight into the eyes of one of the most intimidating people he’d ever met. Peggy Porth. Retired elementary school principal. Certified ballbuster.
Silver Sneakers instructor.
“Hey, Mrs. Porth.” Colton’s voice squeaked like the time in fifth grade when he’d been caught selling Pokémon cards during recess for twice their market value. In his defense, he’d needed the money for Christmas presents for his siblings.
Mrs. Porth stood just five foot three but somehow managed to look down at him when she spoke. “Need I remind you, Mr. Wheeler, that when you asked if you and a couple of friends could attend our classes, I agreed to just a small group. This class is supposed to be for people over fifty exclusively, but you talked me into it. But now I see three others standing by the door waiting to come in.”
The others in question were huddled in a nervous circle a few feet away, occasionally casting furtive glances as if to gauge whether they were about to be tossed out by a bouncer. Colton knew them, of course, but not well, and only because they were Gavin’s and Del’s teammates on the Nashville Legends professional baseball team. His circle of friends included several athletes. Besides Gavin and Del, there was Yan Feliciano, another Legends player. And Vlad Konnikov, a player for the Nashville NHL team, and Malcolm James, who played for the city’s NFL franchise. Which was why Colton had invited them in on this secret in the first place. Silver Sneakers was the most effective workout he’d ever had. He’d never been as strong, fit, or flexible, and it had all started by accident. He’d thought he was taking a Six-Pack Abs class but had gotten the room wrong and instead found himself sweating his balls off as he tried to keep up with the sixty-something-year-old women who made step aerobics look like a mere jaunt through the park. He’d been sore for days but kept coming back because, damn, but also because no one in the room gave a single flying fuck who he was.